Paris tops list of world's most expensive cities

Paris, the French capital, moved up one place among the world's most expensive cities to shares the title together with Hong Kong and Singapore, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit's 2019 Worldwide Cost of Living Survey, released last Tuesday. The list is compiled when comparing the prices of more than 150 items in 133 cities around the world. Singapore stays at the top for the sixth year in a row.

The Swiss cities of Zurich and Geneva were jointly ranked fourth, followed by Japan's Osaka and Seoul in South Korea. The US cities of New York and Los Angeles ranked eighth and tenth, while Israel's second-most populous city, Tel Aviv, entered the Top 10 for the first time, at the ninth place to be the only Middle Eastern high-ranked representative in the survey.

“We note converging costs in traditionally more expensive cities like Paris, Singapore, Zurich, Geneva, Copenhagen, and Hong Kong,” Roxana Slavcheva, the editor of the survey, said in a media release. “It is a testament to globalisation and the similarity of tastes and shopping patterns. Even in locations where shopping for groceries may be relatively cheaper, utilities or transportation prices drive up overall cost of living,” she noted.

At the other end of the rankings, Caracas in Venezuela has overtaken the Syrian capital, Damascus, as the world's cheapest city, out of all those surveyed.

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